The Islamist lawyer who filed the charges this week said Mr. Youssef had humiliated the president in front of other leaders.

Mr. Youssef joins the growing ranks of media figures and politicians accused of undermining Egypt’s president and the state. The charges are no laughing matter: A right-wing talk show host was given a four-month jail sentence in October for the same crime.

But Mr. Youssef’s team is taking the case with typical comic aplomb. In an interview this week, the head of programming for the privately owned CBC channel that hosts Mr. Youssef’s show waxed philosophical about the charges. He sees them as the inevitable by-product of Egypt’s maturing political scene.

“The media are developing in the same way that the political scene is developing,” said Mr. Hany. “The media are like society: They are learning to practice freedom.”

Mr. Hany disputed claims that charges against Mr. Youssef and others are part of a Islamist-led assault on the media. The Egyptian legal system allows just about anyone to bring charges, opening the door for the kind of lawyerly show-boating that is rarely taken seriously.

Mr. Youssef, after all, is an equal-opportunity satirist. Cossetted by a massive following of enthusiastic young viewers, Mr. Youssef takes pot shots at all manner of Egyptian public figures, including news anchors on the CBC channel Mr. Youssef now calls home.

The CBC, which has a reputation for supporting Egypt’s ousted regime, recently plucked Mr. Youssef from the more liberal, revolutionary-minded OnTV.

During his first show on the new channel, Mr. Youssef told his applauding audience that he switched loyalties because the CBC had simply offered him more money. He then lampooned the channel’s counter-revolutionary talking heads.

Though Mr. Hany declined to speculate on the possible outcome of the case, he said the charges amount to a small step toward wearing down Egyptians’ reverence for public figures borne from generations of autocracy.